


Instant Messaging: The Birthday

by TheSaddleman



Series: Instant Messaging [12]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Birthdays, Dancing, F/M, Fluff, Psychic Paper, Romance, Smothers Brothers, a bit of foreshadowing, hollywood musicals, semi canon compliant, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 20:22:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12712287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSaddleman/pseuds/TheSaddleman
Summary: On her birthday, Clara feels a bit distracted. Everyone else seems to have forgotten she's turning 30 today. Why not the Doctor, too?





	Instant Messaging: The Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I have written an Instant Messaging story. This one is a bit different from the others. You don't need to be familiar with the others in this series. This story takes place sometime between The Girl Who Died and Sleep No More in Series 9. Clara's age in this story is based upon my opinion (working from the date given in the episode In the Forest of the Night) that Clara's death occurred sometime after 2016 (perhaps 2017 or even 2018), not in 2015 as implied by the spin-off Class.

Clara Oswald hated to admit it, but she didn’t like _Sense and Sensibility_ very much. Oh, of course, she loved the book and what it stood for on general principle, and the movie version with Kate Winslet was one of her favourite films. And, of course, Jane wrote it. But, really, compared to Austen’s other works, Clara felt it was still a bit … lacking.

It had nothing to do with the fact she’d proofread the manuscripts of _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Mansfield Park_ and Jane had accepted some of her helpful suggestions. Not a bit. Really. OK, it did, but she was not about to admit it aloud. The last thing she needed was yet another Ofsted review.

The problem was she’d done _Pride and Prejudice_ to death in her English class, and _Sense and Sensibility_ was the only other Austen novel that Coal Hill School had enough copies of in storage to pass out to all her students. So that is why she was stuck one dreary November afternoon with listening to the droning voices of bored teenagers reading aloud from that particular novel. She made a mental note to requisition twenty-five copies of _Mansfield Park_ for next year.

Clara soon found herself zoning out. Dealing with a slightly underwhelming entry in Jane Austen’s canon wasn’t the reason she felt distracted. It was the calendar. Of course, it wasn’t the usual day for the Doctor to come and whisk her away to some exotic planet or far-distant time. But she really wished he’d remembered this year. 

It’s not every day someone turns thirty.

But then, for a Time Lord, what’s a birthday? She supposed the same could be said for Christmas, too. The Doctor had told her how he once experienced more than a decade’s worth of Yuletides in just one evening. Something about acting out Dickens’ story for a grumpy old man on an Earth colony who was being a dick. The Doctor said it turned him off Christmases for a while after that, and even after he changed, she noticed he became weepy whenever a Katherine Jenkins song came on the TARDIS radio. Clara was not totally convinced by his later claim that repeated exposure to Peter Andre’s “Mysterious Girl” was the reason he up and transformed the radio into a clockwork squirrel one morning. 

Oh well, she thought. Everyone else except Dad has forgotten anyway. At least with the Doctor I can get him to take me to a real space restaurant to make up. But he’s picking up the tab this time. 

Suddenly, she noticed the students were starting to put their books away. She glanced at the clock. Wow—she’d been so out of it, end of day had snuck up to her.

“Make sure you finish up to Chapter 20 for next class and be ready for a quiz,” Clara told the students, who groaned as a collective in response. 

Before long, she was alone in the classroom with only the muffled din of students emptying out into the street below as the soundtrack. She went to the window and opened it up, looking out into the yard. It wasn’t really the time of year for opening a window—the twenty-third of November wasn’t exactly, say, April twenty-seventh, but she needed a bit of bracing chill to snap herself out of the funk she found herself in.

She didn’t really have a lot to look forward to when she got home. A trio of gourmet cupcakes she’d indulged to pick up, her comfy pajamas and a Netflix binge of Gerry Anderson’s _UFO_ lay ahead. (Why _UFO_? During a recent snoop in the Black Archive, Clara had discovered Anderson based the show upon an intel leak he’d been slipped about UNIT by a certain recorder-playing gentleman with a Moe Howard-like haircut, who shall remain nameless.)

It was then that Clara felt a sudden, subtle vibration in the left breast pocket of her blouse. She smiled. At last.

She took out a small (faux) leather folder that contained what to casual eyes might appear to be a blank piece of paper, about the size of two business cards arranged side by side. Words began to form on the paper.

     **Clara? Are you there?**

Clara waited for a moment. She knew what came next—it had become their thing and she always got a chuckle out of it:

     **Clara Clara Clara Clara-**

That was her cue. Clara took a deep breath and opened her mind. It had taken quite a bit of practice to be able to learn how to allow the psychic paper to latch onto her thoughts. And even more practice to direct what thoughts she wanted transmitted to the Doctor’s own copy. When she first started, every little thought went through. Every one. It had occasionally gotten … uncomfortable. But since they’d started this psychic form of “instant messaging,” it had become their favourite style of communication. Of course, thanks to the Doctor augmenting her mobile, he could always call her up from anywhere in the universe, and she him (which had led to a couple of truly galactic drunk-dialling incidents (one involving the Daleks) that shall be chronicled at a later date). 

But the psychic paper—though neither the Doctor, nor Clara, would ever admit it—simply felt more … intimate. It felt the way Clara sometimes hoped a Vulcan mind meld might feel. If Leonard Nimoy did it.

Clara formulated a response in her mind, knowing it was about to appear on the Doctor’s own paper a zillion light years, or maybe a zillion years, away.

_Doctor! How are you?_

     **Just peachy.**

     **Had to put down a revolt**

     **by a group of sentient boulders.**

     **I thought I was done with quarries**

     **but nooooo.**

     **So, how are you, Clara?**

_Bored._

_Class just ended._

_Spent it reading Sense & Sensibility._

_Not Jane’s best._

     **Don’t let her hear you say that.**

     **She’s still mad at you mentioning how**

     **Pride and Prejudice got a zombie makeover.**

_Yeah, she wasn’t impressed._

_So, to what do I owe the pleasure?_

There, Clara thought. I just gave you an opening. You called because you wanted to wish me Happy Birthday. You remembered. I knew you would.

     **Do you remember where I put my**

     **red velvet jacket?**

     **The keys to Bessie are inside**

     **and I want to take her for a spin.**

Clara frowned.

_Why would I know where your keys are?_

_We’re not space married._

_That’s just what we tell people_

_to mess with them._

     **You were with me last time I wore it.**

     **You bought it for me.**

     **Said you were bored of my holey jumper.**

_I know. I love that coat._

_And I love you. In it._

Dammit, it happened again, Clara thought. Occasionally, the psychic paper would glitch on punctuation. She hoped he didn’t notice. 

_Have you checked the kitchen?_

     **Which kitchen?**

Fair question, that. She had to think a moment. Which one had it been the day they went to Carnaby Street in 1967?

_The one with the cathedral._

     **I’ll go check. Hang on.**

Clara closed the window and sat back down at her desk. She envisioned the Doctor stalking down a corridor, turning right at the bins, left at the room that was filled with paintings of cats (a legacy from a past life, the Doctor had told her), and then into Kitchen 342, which was a replica of York Minster. Or perhaps York Minster was a replica of Kitchen 342. With the Doctor, one was never sure.

Clara tried to take her mind off the fact that he hadn’t wished her happy birthday after all. She sighed. Hurry up, Doctor, she thought. Cupcake heaven and Ed Bishop’s wig await.

     **Found it!**

     **It was on a chair between the third pew and the coffee machine.**

     **You’re a pal, Clara.**

_You’re welcome._

_So when are you coming around?_

     **Is it Wednesday already?**

_No, just wanted to see you._

     **Are you OK?**

Clara knew, for the Doctor, all of time and space had just taken a back seat as he thought that question.

_No, I’m fine! Just…_

_…do you know what day this is?_

     **It’s not Wednesday.**

Clara sighed.

_Sigh._

Argh. Sometimes the psychic paper did that, too.

     **What?**

_Forget it._

_See you Wednesday?_

     **Always.**

     **Bye, Clara.**

Clara smiled, closed the folder and put it back into her pocket. No sooner had she done that, then she felt the paper vibrate again.

     **Forgot to ask.**

     **Can you snag a couple pieces of chalk for me?**

     **Ran out.**

_All of time and space_

_and you need me to score chalk for you._

_What you do, eat them?_

     **I like your chalk.**

     **They won’t miss a piece or two.**

     **Thanks, Clara! Bye!**

Clara put the folder away again with a chuckle. The Doctor and his chalk. Oh well, at least it didn’t take long to train him to use blackboards. Strax was not impressed when he saw every square inch of guest-room wooden floor covered with scrawls that first night they stayed at Vastra’s place after the Doctor’s last regeneration. 

Clara knew better than to take any chalk from the supply cupboard. Not after Armitage ordered random inventories of all supplies after the school’s entire stock of loo paper vanished one night (accidentally sucked into the vortex by the TARDIS and subsequently deposited in orbit over the planet Janssen in the 55 Cancri system, which rather spoiled the view from the ship, though it was almost balletic in a _2001_ way to watch a hundred rolls of tissue slowly unfurl in the cosmos). Not that there was likely to be much chalk on hand anyway; as part of the run-up to Coal Hill School converting into Coal Hill Academy, most of the blackboards were being replaced with interactive whiteboards, no chalk required, so Clara had started buying her own stash that she stored away in the top drawer of her desk. (You don’t think this was the first time the Doctor had made this request, do you?)

Clara pulled the drawer open and that was when she spotted it.

It wasn’t the signed selfie of her with Winston Churchill (she really needed to get that framed one of these days). Nor was it the roll of antacids she occasionally needed whenever a) Courtney Woods acted up, b) Armitage acted up, c) the Doctor acted up, or d) something she ate for dinner on a planet in another galaxy acted up. Nor was it the packet of chalk she’d intended to fetch.

No, what had caught Clara’s attention was a small, disc-like object, seemingly made of glass, even though it wasn’t see-through. It was green and seemed to be glowing from within. As she picked it up, it emitted a slight hum and she could feel it vibrating in her fingers.

A loop of red string was wrapped tightly around a groove running along the equator of the object. The free part of the string changed colour to gold and ended in a hand-tied loop that Clara already knew would fit perfectly over her _digitus medius_.

It was, without a doubt, the most beautiful yo-yo she had ever seen.

A small handwritten Post-It note rested under where the yo-yo had sat:

         _ **You didn’t think I’d actually forgotten?**_

         _ **Happy birthday, My Clara.**_

         _ **Dr. ??**_

Clara couldn’t stop herself from laughing. 

“So you found it, then,” said a deep, Scottish-accented voice.

Of course, it had to be him. Clara turned around to see the Doctor leaning nonchalantly in the doorway, resplendent in his red velvet dinner jacket, his grey hair untameable. She crossed the room in three quick steps and gave him a tight hug; no longer averse to this sign of affection (so long as it was just Clara doing it, of course), the Doctor hugged her back.

“I love the present. Thank you!” she said. And then she raised an eyebrow: “Out of chalk, hmm?”

“Nope. Got a whole room full of the stuff now, next door to the jelly babies warehouse.”

She ran a finger over a velvet lapel. “And you didn’t misplace your velvet jacket?”

“Are you kidding? It’d take a lot more for me to lose this.”

Clara stood back, put the loop on her finger and gave the yo-yo a test spin. It flowed perfectly down, then up, then down again. Almost as if it was defying gravity.

“Designed it myself,” the Doctor said, looking on approvingly. “Nothing more embarrassing than a yo-yo running out of steam midway through Walking the Cat…”

“-Walking the Dog-”

“-That’s what I said, Walking the Dog.”

“How did you know I wanted one? Or is this some subtle visual reference as to why I drop everything to travel with you?”

“Ah, my dear Clara, what to get the impossible girl who wants for nothing, that is a question that had puzzled me for a while,” the Doctor said as he came into the room and leaned on one of the desks. “Yo-yos are wonderful tools. They can be used to judge gravitational levels, atmospheric density, and a properly spun yo-yo produces a subsonic tone capable of releasing the sound-based locks used in Draconian prisons.”

Clara executed a near-perfect Around the World. “I’ll probably just use it to amuse myself, thanks. But you didn’t answer my question.”

“You just answered yourself. The Slitheen prison.”

“Where we spent a week in a prison cell and to kill time I borrowed your yo-yo and you taught me these tricks?”

“Good times.”

Clara smiled, nostalgically. “Yeah, that was fun. I mean, we could have been skinned alive at any time and replaced by a bunch of intergalactic crim-”

“Just galactic,” the Doctor corrected. “They haven’t been out of the Milky Way yet.”

“Know-it-all,” Clara stuck her tongue out and gave the yo-yo another successful spin; The Sleeper, this time. “You know what I mean. The adrenaline rush I have with you-”

“-worries the hell out of me,” the Doctor said, his smile vanishing.

The yo-yo unfurled to the floor. “Please, Doctor, not this again.” Don’t say “duty of care.” Please don’t say “duty of care.”

“Don’t you think you’re getting a bit old for this?”

Clara scoffed as she started to wind the string up. “Old? Doctor, I’m just turning thirty. If you tried to do a birthday cake, the candles alone would advance global warming by a year.”

“You know what I mean. You should settle down. Like I said back at the The Drum. Find someone new, someone worthy of following Danny. Make a life where you aren’t being hung upside-down by Missy or bluffing Cybermen-”

“-or sharing an adventure with Robin Hood, or having tea and crumpet with Jane Austen,” Clara said as she approached the Doctor, taking his hand, “or sitting on a beach on a beautiful alien world with you, watching five suns disappear over the horizon.” She kissed him on the cheek, noticing with satisfaction that he didn’t even flinch anymore when she did that. Progress. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

The Doctor’s sour demeanour melted with the kiss and he smiled instead, resigning himself. “So, where would you like to go for your birthday?”

“Oh, surprise me,” Clara said. She gave the yo-yo another spin. With a few deft movements, she formed a triangle pattern with the strings and suspended the still-spinning disc within.

“That, my dear Ms. Oswald, is the best Rocking the Baby I’ve seen since the night I taught Tommy Smothers how to do it.”

“Glad you approve. Hey, hang on a mo-” Clara cocked her head at the Doctor. “We’ve been together now for—how many years?—and you’ve never once told me when’s _your_ birthday.”

“I don’t want you to bother.”

“Come on, my friend, spill. You have to have a birthday. You didn’t just appear out of nowhere.” Clara considered this. “You _didn’t_ just appear out of nowhere, right?”

“If I told you, you’d think I was making it up.”

“Try me.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Well, you aren’t the first one to ask me this question, you know. Back when I was engaged in, shall we say, ‘indentured servitude’ with UNIT in the 1970s (or was it the ’80s?), Jo Grant and some of the UNIT squaddies started a birthday club, so naturally they wanted to know when mine was. I said I didn’t know since I wasn’t born here and Gallifrey’s timeframe doesn’t coincide with Earth’s and obviously we don’t use the Gregorian calendar anyway. So I went away to the TARDIS and had a think and worked out the approximate Earth day that coincided with my birth.”

“Enough backstory, Doctor. I wanna know when to buy _you_ a fancy yo-yo.”

“November the twenty-third.”

Clara’s jaw dropped. “We share the same birthday? You’re taking the pi…making that up.” (Clara had spotted a student walking by in the hall and pivoted her wording a bit.)

“No, I mean it. We share a birthday. Which is today, I guess.”

“And you never thought to tell me.”

“More fun celebrating yours.”

“But I’ve never gotten you anything, Doctor.”

The Doctor indicated the dinner jacket. “What is this, Wirrn stew?” 

“No, I mean for your birthday. Mind you, what do I give a Time Lord? I know, I could have made you some of my mum’s shortbread recipe that you love.”

The Doctor gently took Clara’s hand, removed the yo-yo, and then put her hand against his cheek. Clara opened her palm and rubbed her thumb gently along the skin; he’d had a shave very recently. For her, she realised. “This is enough of a present,” the Doctor said, quietly. 

Clara smiled as they locked eyes for a moment. The Doctor gently moved her hand away from his face and gave her back her yo-yo.

“OK, favourite human of mine,” he said, “I know just the place to take you.”

“As long as it’s a place where you want to go, too. Now that your secret’s out, you’re on the hook, buster,” Clara laughed.

“Quick, name our favourite Hollywood musical.”

“That’s easy— _Funny Face_. Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire. Paris. We’ve watched it about six times.”

“How would you like to go to the premiere? Drinks with Audrey and Fred after, of course.” The Doctor bent his elbow and Clara looped her free arm through his as they began to make their way to the TARDIS’ hiding place in the supply closet.

“You have an ulterior motive, of course.” She smiled up at him. She wasn’t upset; she simply could read the Doctor like a book. The Doctor knew this, too.

“Remember the last time we danced?” he asked.

“Ashildr’s Viking village.”

“No, that was while we were on the clock and putting on a show for the Mire. I mean really danced, just you and me. Blackpool Tower, 2089, the dance hall after we defeated the bad guy. When I realized the only dance I actually properly know in this body is the gavotte. I want to ask Fred to give me some refresher lessons so I can shake a leg with you properly.”

Clara laughed. “Your 1930s is showing, Doctor. I don’t see you as a tap dancer.”

“Now, Clara, you know Astaire was far more than just a tap dancer.”

“That is true,” she said as they arrived at the TARDIS. “Doctor, the gavotte isn’t all that bad, actually.” She trailed a finger along the side of the box. “I like how it ends.” She lowered her eyes a bit at the memory. The gavotte often ended with the partners kissing. Back at the tower it had been little more than a hesitant peck, but still … Clara often looked back on it as the moment where she really …

“I did, too.” The Doctor said, interrupting her thought as he unlocked the TARDIS door and looked down at her with a smile, beckoning her inside.

“Really? It wasn’t awkward for you, or anything?” Clara hesitated at the threshold.

“Now, why would it be awkward?”

“I dunno. I just never thought of you as the dancing and kissing type.”

“My dear Clara, you of all people know I’m full of surprises.”

“Well, if that’s the case,” Clara said as she entered the TARDIS, followed by the Doctor. Just before the doors closed, she turned, stood on tiptoe, and threw her arms around his neck. “Surprise me again.”

**Author's Note:**

> Clara's ambivalence towards Sense and Sensibility is based on my own reaction to trying to read the book and being told by those more familiar with Jane Austen that it's the lesser of her works and a bad place to start. Your mileage may vary, but I think I gave Clara a good excuse!
> 
> The idea of 23 November being Clara's birthday comes from Clara Oswin Oswald's birthday in The Snowmen being established as this. Which, of course, is also the day Doctor Who debuted in 1963. As far as I'm aware an actual birthday day for The Doctor has never been established on screen; but I'm willing to bet if they ever did set one for him it would be Nov. 23 as well. April 27 is mentioned because that's Jenna Coleman's birthday.
> 
> Katherine Jenkins, of course, guest-starred in the Matt Smith-era episode "A Christmas Carol" that I reference. 
> 
> 55 Cancri is a real star system, and the planet name Janssen is also real; it was one of the first extra-solar planets to be given an official name and I chose to name-drop it because it reminded me of the great actor David Janssen of The Fugitive.
> 
> "Dr. ??" is something Peter Capaldi often adds to his autographs. I began writing this story the day I met him at a convention in April 2017 (the story sat in a file for a long time before I finished it in November 2017) so this was fresh in my mind.
> 
> Tommy Smothers of Smothers Brothers comedy fame is a renowned yo-yo artist (google Yo-Yo Man) so I couldn't resist the shoutout. The yo-yo tricks mentioned are all real ones.
> 
> The gavotte dance scene occurs in the short story All the Empty Towers by Jenny Colgan, first published in the anthology The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who. The ending of the dance isn't described in the story, but those familiar with it later pointed out it often ends with a kiss.
> 
> The reference to Funny Face is directly inspired by this blog posting wherein comparisons were made between a Jenna Coleman & Matt Smith photo shoot and the movie's promotional photos (which seem to have clearly inspired Jenna and Matt's set. The idea of Jenna and Peter Capaldi doing a remake I found very appealing: https://freelydifferentluminary.tumblr.com/post/167419496386/double-exposure-last-night-the-movie-funny-face


End file.
